Monday 8 August 1664

Up and abroad with Sir W. Batten, by coach to St. James’s, where by the way he did tell me how Sir J. Minnes would many times arrogate to himself the doing of that that all the Board have equal share in, and more that to himself which he hath had nothing to do in, and particularly the late paper given in by him to the Duke, the translation of a Dutch print concerning the quarrel between us and them, which he did give as his own when it was Sir Richard Ford’s wholly. Also he told me how Sir W. Pen (it falling in our discourse touching Mrs. Falconer) was at first very great for Mr. Coventry to bring him in guests, and that at high rates for places, and very open was he to me therein.

After business done with the Duke, I home to the Coffee-house, and so home to dinner, and after dinner to hang up my fine pictures in my dining room, which makes it very pretty, and so my wife and I abroad to the King’s play-house, she giving me her time of the last month, she having not seen any then; so my vowe is not broke at all, it costing me no more money than it would have done upon her, had she gone both her times that were due to her. Here we saw “Flora’s Figarys.” I never saw it before, and by the most ingenuous performance of the young jade Flora, it seemed as pretty a pleasant play as ever I saw in my life.

So home to supper, and then to my office late, Mr. Andrews and I to talk about our victualling commission, and then he being gone I to set down my four days past journalls and expenses, and so home to bed.

"she giving me her time of the last month, she having not seen any then; so my vowe is not broke at all, it costing me no more money than it would have done upon her, had she gone both her times that were due to her."Q. When is a vow not a vow? A. When it can be rationalized away. I love Sam's reasoning here.

So Bess is in on the vows...And has her own share in them, even to the ability to "carbon trade" her play days. An intriguing hint as to the extent of the Pepys' intimacy...We can really wonder if perhaps Sam did share (carefully edited) parts of the Diary with her as well.

"Sam, however, doesn't seem all that perturbed." It's likely that given the source of this information, Sam reads a little or a lot between the lines - office politics. It strikes me that Batten does nothing and says nothing gratuitously.

Can anyone enlighten us on the meaning of the following, especially 'print':

"the translation of a Dutch print concerning the quarrel between us and them"?

Sam's justification for going to the theatre is a fascinating example of the apparent uniqueness of his diary. While the reasoning undoubtedly went through his head on the day, he clearly felt enough self doubt and guilt to feel the need to put it in writing. Once the argument was set out clearly, he could then put his conscience at ease. Again, his diaries not only tell us much about his own personality, but about human nature in general. As Patricia has implied, we have all justified (minor?) misdemeanors to ourselves in similar ways.

Pint -- printed thing, for example news books; later newspapers were referred to as the "public prints." Here the accusation is that Mennes was representing to the Duke that Sir Richard Ford's translation from the Dutch was his own.

L&M note: "Neither the original nor the translation have been identified. There were many such broadsheets and pamphlets. Ford was one of the leaders of the merchant interest now pressing for war against the Dutch."

"... with Sir W. Batten, ... , where by the way he did tell me how Sir J. Minnes ..."

Could Batten, who can not be ignorant of Pepys attitude towards him and SP's inquiries amongst dockyard officers and staff about him, be trying to 'wind up' SP and set him against Penn (the most competent sailing commander)and the two people with the strongest connections at court, Minnes and Coventry -- thereby decreasing the credibility of accusations SP might make against Batten?

"He does it all the time and to everybody; no one is safe from his unfounded suspicions ..." etc., etc. "He is just too young to understand how senior people work and reads everything the wrong way etc., etc. ..."

Pepy's co-workers are numbskulls or blowhards. It doesn't stop surprising my (though I don't know why by now) that his complains sound so much like the complaints you might hear from someone today.

Big build up to a possible war... I think Pepy's even mentioned before that he thought England was provoking it... sometimes seems like the only thing that's changed since then is that now we have flush toilets.

I wonder if Batten has been noting Pepys' progress toward the "dark side" of dealings with merchants and so forth and, perhaps as a famed turn-coat, feeling a little endangered by Penn's growing prominence with the coming of war and Minnes' sudden burst of activity has decided now is the time to forge an alliance with Coventry's favored lad.

As for Sir John, we have been getting hints that he's not so totally ineffectual a dotard as Sam frequently makes him out to be.

[&lt; PRINT n.; in branch II. perh. also partly shortened &lt; IMPRINT v. (which is attested earlier in the typographical sense, and appears to be more frequent than the simplex verb in early use in this sense). Cf. Anglo-Norman praint, prent, preint, print, prynt (1212 or earlier as prient), past participle of preindre, preendre to press, to squeeze, to stamp (see PRINT n.). Cf. also Middle Dutch prenten, preinten, printen to press, to squeeze, to impress, to stamp (with a die or pointed instrument), to cast in a mould, to form, shape, to engrave, (fig.) to leave an impression in (the mind or heart) (Dutch prenten, {dag}printen), Middle Low German prenten to impress, stamp, to cause to leave a mark, to print (books, pamphlets), to be a printer, and (&lt; Middle Low German) Old Danish prente to print (books, pamphlets) (Danish (now arch. or regional) prente to print (books, pamphlets), to engrave, to write down or draw using a pointed object, to write (letters) separately in a style resembling printed text, to impress (also fig.)), Swedish pränta, {dag}prenta to print (books, pamphlets) (now rare), to write (letters) separately in a style resembling printed text, (now obs.) to engrave, to stamp (a coin). Cf. also Middle French (Walloon) printer to coin or stamp money (1544). Cf. PRINT adj.1, PRINTED adj., both of which are first attested slightly earlier in the typographical sense.

Pepys has got it right. He goes to the office, and finds the usual farce with Sir Minnes. Pepys pays no attention at all, has a good lunch, and takes the afternoon off to go home and hang fine pictures in his dining room and take Elizabeth to a play (she smiling all the while at his abstruse calculations of vows, which come out all right for her to go to a play). They do say the French know how to live, but Pepys is not too bad at smelling the roses and s@@@w them all. Tis a truth,, Living Well Is The Best Revenge, and keeping up on Pepys is good living indeed.

"... In 1666 Pepys had only one landscape - a Dutch snow scene - and one religious piece, a heard of Santa Clara (by an unknown artist.) He did not possess, by the end of the diary, any still-lifes or illusionist pictures, though they were in many ways his favorite pictures. ..."

"...and particularly the late paper given in by him to the Duke, the translation of a Dutch print concerning the quarrel between us and them, which he did give as his own when it was Sir Richard Ford's wholly..."

pure guess> it be translation of drawing [or satirical cartoon] that depicts the Dutch version of the quarrel , then has the audacity to make the work, his version to get points, it be redrawn and reworded for better point scoring, as it could be slighting the Anglos.Print be it on paper or on copper is not clear.

The OED had recorded print being used in so many ways, that one could write a thesis on its meaning.One has to rely on context and if it still exists in Pepys papers, for a concise answer.I believe political cartoons were all the rage.

follow up Cartoon: 1. A drawing on stout paper, made as a design for a painting of the same size to be executed in fresco or oil, or for a work in tapestry, mosaic, stained glass, or the like.1671 EVELYN Diary 18 Jan., I perceived him [Gibbon], carving that large cartoon, or crucifix, of Tintoretto.

Seems very natural of poor Sir John to rush in and try to stress his scholar's credentials by suggesting he had translated the Dutch public report on the negotiations.

***

It's interesting to see the Dutch using a printed format, presumably cheap and widely distributed, to get their spin on the situation out to the world. Charles' government employs heavy censorship and newspapers per se were just starting to emerge in formats we might recognize so the Dutch naturally try to bypass by printing a propaganda "leaflet".

Hmmn...Are these coming over on merchant ships (bearing plague rats from Amsterdam?) or being printed right in England? If no imported source for the prints has been identified, and they're not the product of the Dutch Embassy, it's not surprising it would be a serious matter for the Duke.

It would appear that almost all printing in Dutch was taking place in the Netherlands and that the standard Dutch/English-English/Dutch dictionary, prepared by an Englishman, was printed and issued in Rotterdam and not London, at least four editions to 1660 -- the Dutch appear to have been more interested in the English language than the English in the Dutch. I can find no evidence of any surviving Dutch propaganda printing in English, or Dutch, for distribution in England.

However, the English certainly were cranking up the internal propaganda against the Dutch, a typical example by 'A true lover and asserter of his countries honour' 'English and Dutch affairs displayed to the life: both in matters of warr, state, and merchandize; how far the English engaged in their defence, against the most potent monarchy of Spain; and how ill the Dutch have since requited the English, for their extraordinary favours; not onely in the time of Queen Elizabeth their protector and defendress; but also in the time of King James, by their bloody massacree of them at Amboyna: their ingratitude to King Charles the First of glorious memory: and the true state of affairs, as they now stand in the reign of our royal soveraign, King Charles the Second.' London : printed by Thomas Mabb, for Edward Thomas at the Adam and Eve in Little Brittaine, 1664. [4], 56 p. ; 4⁰.

[A quick and dirty check in the ESTC database shows a very small number of imprints in Dutch in England, less than 15 prior to 1800 -- the largest distinct group are psalters of the mid C16th. from London and Norwich. There appear to be about the same number of uses of 'London' as a false imprint in Dutch publications clearly employed to evade local, Dutch, censorship and a small number (less than ten) of Dutch re-printings, circa 1648, of London works on the execution of Charles I etc.

The 'standard,' in fact the only, Dutch/English Dictionary was printed and issued in Rotterdam; Henry Hexam (?1585-?1650)'A copious English and Netherduytch dictionarie composed out of our best English authours : with an appendix of the names of all kind of beasts, fowles, birds, fishes, hunting, and hawking : as also a compendious grammar for the instruction of the learner = Het groot woorden-boeck : gestelt in't Engelsch ende Nederduytsch : met een appendix van de namen van alderley beesten, vogelen, visschen, jagerye, ende valkerye, &c. : als oock een korte Engelsche grammatica ... Rotterdam 1647-48; 1648; 1658; 1660. The relatively small number of copies of the various in English institutional collections (there are three times as many in N. American Universities alone) suggest the work was not in wide demand in England. The place in the English speaking world with the largest number of imprints in Dutch is New York, beginning at the end of the C 17th. onward.]

De Ruyter was with a number of merchantmen, and sailing through the Straits to Tangier, where he met Lawson. This time salvos were fired on both sides, but neither dipped the flag, for De Ruyter had not yet received De Witt's letter. Personal relations between the two Admirals continued to be friendly, and each sent their own captain on board the other flagship with complimentary messages. Lawson even offered to fetch refreshments and water from the nearest Spanish ports, because he could not be refused practica. De Ruyter (not allowed to land due to fears of plague on his ships) politely declined the offer.

"she giving me her time of the last month, she having not seen any then; so my vowe is not broke at all, it costing me no more money than it would have done upon her, had she gone both her times that were due to her."

Let us suppose the vow is about ....wait for it.........money.

What else is at stake for Pepys, in the final analysis, but how much the plays are costing him? (Well, there is the distraction.) So, the higgery-biggery about Elizabeth's contributing "her time" translates into cost: "it costing me no more money than it would have done upon her, had she gone both her times that were due to her."

Pepys here decides his vows regarded how many plays could be seen has cash value as the cost of tickets for two, according to the legal principal of coverture, "a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture

So, yes, "So Bess is in on the vows", but only by inference and not expressly.

The Pepys encyclopedia tells us that Sir Richard Ford was responsible for securing the publication in 1664 of Thomas Mun's *England's treasure by foreign trade*, which although written in 1641 made the argument for the need for war against the Dutch, ...

Thomas Mun (c June 17, 1571, London — c. July 21, 1641) English writer on economics who gave the first clear and vigorous statement of the theory of the balance of trade.

Thomas Mun came to prominence during the English economic depression of 1620 which many people were blaming on the East India Company because the company financed its trade by exporting £30,000 in bullion on each voyage.

In *A Discourse of Trade, from England unto the East Indies* (1621), Thomas Mun argued that so long as England’s total exports exceeded its total imports in the process of visible trade, the export of bullion was not harmful. He argued the money earned on the sale of re-exported East Indian goods exceeded the amount of originally-exported bullion with which those goods were purchased.

The argument may have been self-serving: Mun was affiliated with the East India Company and was appointed to the Standing Commission on Trade in 1622.

Thomas Mun believed a nation’s gold holdings are the main measure of its wealth, and governments should regulate trade to produce an excess of exports over imports in order to gain more gold for the country.

(Later economists, from Adam Smith on, showed that trade is self-regulating, and governments that hoard gold or other hard currencies will make their countries worse off.)

A further development of Thomas Mun’s ideas appears in *England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade*, a book that was published in 1664 — decades after his death.

Adam Smith saw Thomas Mun (1571–1641) as a major creator of the mercantilist view of economics, especially in his posthumously published Treasure by Foreign Trade (1664), which Smith considered the archetype or manifesto of the movement. Mercantilism was the dominant school of economic thought in Europe throughout the late Renaissance and early modern period (from the 15th to the 18th century). Mercantilism encouraged the many intra-European wars of the period and arguably fueled European expansion and imperialism—both in Europe and throughout the rest of the world—until the 19th century or early 20th century. An early statement on national balance of trade appeared in Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, 1549: "We must always take heed that we buy no more from strangers than we sell them, for so should we impoverish ourselves and enrich them."[8] The period featured various but often disjointed efforts by the court of Queen Elizabeth to develop a naval and merchant fleet capable of challenging the Spanish stranglehold on trade and of expanding the growth of bullion at home. Queen Elizabeth promoted the Trade and Navigation Acts in Parliament and issued orders to her navy for the protection and promotion of English shipping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

The Navigation Acts were a series of English laws that restricted colonial trade to England. They were first enacted in 1651 and throughout that time until 1663, and were repealed in 1849. They reflected the policy of mercantilism, which sought to keep all the benefits of trade inside the Empire, and to minimize the loss of gold and silver to foreigners. They prohibited the colonies from trading directly with the Netherlands, Spain, France, and their colonies. The original ordinance of 1651 was renewed at the Restoration by Acts of 1660, 1663, 1670, and 1673, with subsequent minor amendments. The Acts formed the basis for English overseas trade for nearly 200 years. Additionally the Acts restricted the employment of non-English sailors to a quarter of the crew on returning East India Company ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Acts

Effects on American colonies

The Navigation Acts, while enriching Britain, caused resentment in the colonies and contributed to the American Revolution. The Navigation Acts required all of a colony's imports to be either bought from England or resold by English merchants in England, no matter what price could be obtained elsewhere.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Acts#E...